A Time-travel Drama That`s Very Dopey

For some reason, CBS has a fixation with entertainment enterprises that deal with time travel--perhaps as a means of escaping the network`s not-exactly-sanguine present state of affairs.

A couple of months ago, it introduced a series, ``The Outlaws,`` in which a sheriff and a quartet of bank robbers are transported from the year 1899 to the present. A couple of weeks later, in a made-for-TV movie called ``The Return of Sherlock Holmes,`` a yuppie private detective from contemporary Boston thaws the master sleuth`s body, which had been frozen back in 1901, and introduces him to Baker Street`s fast-food joints and punk hairdos.

Now comes ``Timestalkers`` (8 p.m. Tuesday on Channel 2), another devastatingly dopey movie in which Lauren Hutton--cast as Georgia Crawford, the daughter of a 26th Century statesman/scientist--continu es her record of always looking decidedly better than her material (``Sins,`` ``Monte Carlo``) by stepping out of the year 2586 and into the present as casually as if she`d just stepped out of the shower.

Her surprised host is Dr. Scott McKenzie (affably played by William Devane of ``Knots Landing``), a modern-day college professor who has considerably more than Georgia on his mind. Following the death of his wife and young son in an auto accident, he fills up his lonely hours by studying the lifestyle of the Old West--even practicing fast-draw in his backyard--as well as contemplating the possibilities of time-travel.

One day when he is not slapping leather, he attends an auction and buys an 1886 tintype, and when he examines the picture later, happens to notice in it a .357 magnum revolver, circa 1980. ``There`s something wrong here,`` he muses. ``I think I`ve been had.``

The same may be said of the unwary viewer. Before you know it, Georgia is telling the professor, ``We`re thought-paralleled.`` Instead of dumping her right there, he agrees to help her solve a ``mystery in history`` (isn`t that special?) as they attempt to track down the heinous Dr. Joseph Cole (Klaus Kinski). A ``brilliant, dangerous`` physicist, Cole--when he is not busy sneering and delivering his lines in a glum monotone--walks around gunning people down while barely mussing his long tan coat and ``Kung Fu``-style slouch hat. (The movie, in fact, is a veritable rags-a-rama, with McKenzie wearing everything from Bat Masterson garb to Indian headbands, and Georgia prancing around a good deal of the time in a post-Civil War cavalry uniform.) According to the muddled plot, Cole helped invent a crystal that conquers time, and now, of course, intends to use it for his own evil purposes by transporting himself to 1886 and altering the course of history. He is also out to destroy ``the one man who stood in his way``--i.e., Georgia`s father

(John Considine)--the co-inventor of said device, which looks like a cross between a Rubik`s Cube and the flashing-buzzing children`s game, Simon.

Meanwhile, Michael Schultz keeps things zapping between the past, present and future, using special effects that look as if they were resurrected from some 1950s B-movie warehouse. He also displays a couple of other experts on the Old West--``Texas`` John Cody (the late Forrest Tucker), who insists on calling Georgia ``missy,`` and an Air Force general named Brodsky (played by John Ratzenberger, who sounds exactly as he does playing Cliff the mailman on ``Cheers`` as he declares, ``It`s time to hit the ol` psychiatrist`s couch``).

Perversely fascinating in its flat-out awfulness, the movie--adapted by Brian Clemens from a story by Ray Brown--also trots out stagecoach robbers, rattlesnakes, a mysterious stranger and all sorts of cross-generational cliches, including the one fired out by President Grover Cleveland. ``Who was that man?`` he asks at one point. ``I wanted to shake his hand.``